If I were an Ideologue -- in fact, if I were a whole group of unnamed, unidentified Ideologues -- and I wanted to bend the Milwaukee Public Schools Board to my own will, to serve my Agenda, what would I do? I have three strikes against me: The MPS Board doesn't agree with my Agenda, the public probably doesn't agree with my Agenda, and objective data don't support my Agenda, so it's a hard sell. The only elements in my favor are that some MPS Board members are up for election this year, Milwaukee has a lot of competing challenges to distract the public, and I have some money to spend.
Actually, I have two more elements in my favor: One of the MPS Board members up for re-election in 2009 is its chairman, Peter Blewett, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a long history of running against Peter Blewett.
All of the strikes against me can be overcome, I think. Rather than presenting my Agenda myself, it's better to get a camera-friendly group of parents, community leaders and businessmen to do it for me. Shouldn't be hard, so long as they agree with my Agenda but understand the game well enough to push a more Popular Agenda -- electing a new MPS Board -- to the public. That solves the problem of public sentiment that opposes my Agenda; the public never has to know my real Agenda until after the new MPS Board is seated, and then it's too late to undo the election.
Still, one needs allies.
So, a camera-friendly group is organized, making sure to include all the necessary demographics and good-government types. They call themselves the Advocates for Student Achievement. They engage the services of a consultant and spokesperson, someone who gets what's going on and what's needed, someone who can "get crystal clear on who we should be targeting for our future growth, how we want that target market to view us, and how we can further strengthen the ‘value proposition’ that we deliver to them." I mean someone who really understands how to "use rebranding to alter public views..."
They adopt a media-friendly motto: "Students are our only special interest." Who can be against that? Right off the bat, they pick up some allies to help promote this "grassroots" effort: the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors (GMAR, who has been with the Agenda for a long time already), and the "Coalition for an Educated Milwaukee," whose own motto -- "School choice is a vital community asset" -- shows they're totally on board.
For ASA, 2008 was a busy year. Recruiting candidates to run for public office doesn't just happen all by itself, nor does taking these recruits and getting them ready for prime time. There are trainings involved, to make them campaign savvy. There's fundraising involved, to make sure they can compete. None of these things happen on their own; someone who's organized has to make them happen, make sure the "volunteers" keep the trains running on time, make sure the calls are being made and the checks are being cut, make sure the pollster gets paid.
Right, the pollster. Yes, you need a pollster to help you take over a school board. Maybe not YOUR school board, but let's just cut through the crap and acknowledge that taking control of the Milwaukee Public Schools Board is a big deal. The MPS Board oversees a huge budget -- $1.2 billion, with a B -- and it either spends that money the way IT wants to, or it'll spend that money the way I want it to. So far, it doesn't spend the money the way I want it to, so I want that changed. And I'm not investing this much of my own time and money in organizing a camera-friendly parents group, or training a bunch of first-time candidates to run for office, just to lose because we didn't do a push-poll, if that's what you call it.
Now, drafting a poll is a funny thing. Running a poll that gets the results you want to know is tricky, and then there's the question of how to release your poll results to the media. It helps if you have some friendly media to take and publish your poll results, but in Milwaukee, that's covered.
I don't want to know what the voters of Milwaukee want. I want to know how to get the voters of Milwaukee to agree with my Agenda, and to what degree they're willing to vote the way I want them to. Simple as that. And I want to know that, if there's something that the challenger candidates can do to help persuade these voters to vote them into office, what is that? And finally, if there's HYPOTHETICAL information that I think will hurt the incumbents and help the challengers, then I want to tell the voters this hypothetical information and let them make them their own minds about it. The purists call this push-polling, but I call it testing a hypothetical. Beauty of a hypothetical is, it's a hypothetical. So sue me, right?
If the poll results you get are platinum in your favor, you want to release them to the media and say, See, Milwaukee agrees with me (or us), the MPS Board has to go. If the numbers go against you, you want to bury them. But if you get a mixed result -- some platinum, some crap -- you want to release the good numbers and keep the rest to yourself. Again, the purists will cry foul and you'll get some wisenheimers complaining about poll bias and integrity. Doesn't matter. Good numbers are good numbers, and you use them.
What to look for in a pollster? In a local race like this, you want someone with a known name, even if it costs more. It's the E.F. Hutton principle: When E.F. Hutton speaks, everyone listens. So in Milwaukee, which just delivered a good turnout for Barack Obama last November, it's perfect to get someone who did polling for Obama. Pay him his fee, put his name on top of the poll data you're releasing, and you're golden.
Okay, so ASA commissioned a poll. It picked a pollster, paid $11,900 for the poll (and, truth be told, for the use of his name and his "boutique" polling company out of Washington, D.C.), and got back the results. Just as expected, it was a mixed bag. So, you release the good parts of the poll summary, bury the rest, and don't let anyone see the cross-tabs, the detailed breakdown of the poll responses.
But then, as often happens when you're dealing with people who aren't fully on board, all Hell broke loose: The pollster wouldn't put his name on the results. WTF? Why? Because of the Agenda. Wisenheimers, as I mentioned earlier, were offended at the "methodology" -- fancy way of saying they didn't like a push-poll. Bottom line: Pollster pulled his name.
Then, with the whole "push-poll" thing stuck to the poll, the Journal-Sentinel reporter didn't want to cover it. Again, WTF? How hard is it to stick to the story? And this is such an easy story, a moron could write it: ASA is not a pro-voucher group, it's a good government group, and it's trying to encourage good people to challenge for seats on the MPS Board. Why? Because good candidates and vigorously contested elections are needed to preserve faith in a democratically elected MPS Board. Next question.
So what if Peter Blewett is the only incumbent on the Board running for re-election, and ASA's mission is anti-incumbent, so it looks like ASA is targeting Blewett. For one thing, the Journal-Sentinel has been opposed to Blewett for years, so this should be a no-brainer for a Journal-Sentinel reporter.
There's one last principle when it comes to releasing poll data: Do not release the cross-tabs. In fact, when releasing the poll data, you don't even bring a copy of the cross-tabs to the room.
Finally, you stay away from using the term "push-poll." The last thing you want people to think is that ASA is a front group for a voucher agenda, and that it admits it ran a push-poll by a pollster who's won't let him use his name. Just remember, It's not a push-poll. It's not a push-poll.
February 2, 2009: School Group Admits it was behind Milwaukee School Board Election Push Poll
The group "Advocates for Student Achievement" (ASA) admitted today in a public meeting that it was behind a recent "push poll" in Milwaukee School Board districts with contested elections. The meeting was held this morning at the Italian Community Center. ASA spokesperson Anne Curley admitted in answers to questions from the audience that it was releasing only some of the questions and responses in the poll.
The Parker Group conducted the push poll, a technique used to plant negative ideas about candidates in voters’ minds while posing as a neutral poll (In the district represented by MPS Board Chair Peter Blewett, a "question" alleged that Blewett had approved of School Board Director Charlene Hardin’s trip to Philadelphia, an allegation that is not accurate. (For more on this push poll see column today by Dan Bice, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
None of the results of this poll can be taken seriously if some of the questions were "push" questions. If ASA really believed in transparency, it would release all the questions in the poll so public can see that the poll was designed to get the answers it received."
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Spokesperson for ASA also admitted in answers to questions from the audience, that it asked no questions in the poll about the state funding formula’s impact on MPS education.
While this group claims its poll was intended to identify public perception of issues in MPS, it was clearly intended to persuade voters that the current school board is the problem. The group’s agenda is clearly revealed because it did not ask about the funding formula, the cost of the Voucher Program to taxpayers, the failed Neighborhood School Initiative, or what voters like about the MPS.
Perfect illustration of the old adage: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
And once this kind of coverage is published, it's just nano-seconds before the blogosphere grabs and regurgitates it. Leave it to a blogger to find out that the pollster used a vendor with some questionable history.
Advocates for Student Achievement (ASA) admitted today it hired the Parker Group, which was found guilty in federal court in 1999 for racial discrimination, to conduct a push poll in Milwaukee School Board districts with contested elections.
In the MPS’s sixth district, where ReDonna Rodgers is challenging incumbent Peter Blewett, the Poll falsely stated that Peter Blewett authorized Board Member Charlene Hardin to attend a personal trip with Board funds. Citizens Action for Wisconsin requested the release all the questions in the poll so the public can see that the poll was designed to get the answers it received.
At an event held this morning at the Italian Community Center, ASA spokesperson Anne Curley admitted in answers to questions that it was releasing only some of the questions and responses in the poll. While this group claims its poll was intended to identify public perception of issues in MPS, it was clearly intended to persuade voters that the current school board is the problem. The group’s agenda is clearly revealed because it did not ask about the funding formula, the cost of the Voucher Program to taxpayers, the failed Neighborhood School Initiative, or what voters like about the MPS.
And then the opinion-mongers and alternative media pour it on thick.
If you’ve donated to the Advocates for Student Achievement (ASA), you should ask for your money back. The pro-voucher "reform" group commissioned a poll on voters’ attitudes before Milwaukee Public Schools board members face voters in April. But the poll, which ASA leaders are presenting as scientific, is anything but scientific. Not only did the respondents confirm the results that ASA was looking for—"voters are looking for major change" and they "overwhelmingly disapprove of the direction of MPS"—but the poll also included sleazy, inaccurate questions about MPS Board President Peter Blewett’s role in the Charlene Hardin travel dust-up (see "Jerk of the Week" for details).
The rest of the "legitimate" section of the poll is full of leading questions and obvious answers (and spelling errors). According to the results, voters want board members who will set aside differences and work together—no kidding. Voters don’t have "a great deal of tax anxiety" but "a large majority want tax dollars spent more efficiently." Did the ASA expect voters to support wasting tax dollars?
Even worse is the complete absence of questions about MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos’ job performance, the school funding formula that penalizes Milwaukee, or anything positive about MPS. What’s more, the questions imply that MPS board members are in control of the voucher program, when it is clearly mandated and managed by the state government (and favored by out-state legislators, not Milwaukee’s representatives).
This dishonest, sloppy, unscientific poll should be junked. But, sadly, pro-voucher, anti-public-education candidates and their supporters in the business community will use the survey as proof that their failed experiment in school privatization is popular among Milwaukee voters. Please don’t fall for it.
Jerks of the Week: Advocates for Student Achievement
If you want to target an elected official, you might as well be honest and up front about it. The cowards at the pro-voucher group Advocates for Student Achievement (ASA) commissioned a bogus poll about the Milwaukee Public Schools. ASA released some of the results—but not the ones that dealt with MPS Board President Peter Blewett. In those dodgy questions, the "push poll" asked highly misleading and inaccurate questions about Blewett’s role in the overblown Charlene Hardin travel saga. For example, the questions implied that Blewett approved Hardin’s junket to Philadelphia. For the record, Blewett had nothing to do with Hardin’s trip, and has criticized her actions. So why is the ASA being so secretive about its polling? ASA presents a bland face to the public, but it’s really a front group for the pro-privatization crowd, and while it wants to plant propaganda in the minds of voters, it doesn’t want the public to know that it’s using sleazy tactics to try to defeat Blewett in the April elections.
When the situation gets as FUBAR as this one, you have to take a deep breath, go back to the fundamentals of the Agenda, re-group and try again. You've got candidates in the field and the primary's just around the corner. They need cover. If the Journal-Sentinel reporter won't give you valuable coverage for your poll, then maybe the paper's editorial page will; it's worth a try.
Don't look now, but the local school status quo just might get hit in the face come Tuesday. The latest signal is a poll of 400 Milwaukeeans likely to vote in the primary election. If you had to put a word on the mood of the majority, the word would be "coup."
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The January poll, commissioned by a Milwaukee school-board reform group, Advocates for Student Achievement, and conducted by Brilliant Corners, a Washington consulting firm that usually works for Democrats...
Taking over a school board is hard work.